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| Oldest known picture! |
Before you attack me, I know completing a transgender transition is never easy, and so many of us wish we had done it earlier in life.
Plus, with each successive year, testosterone ravages our male bodies even more. However, the binary genders tend to merge back towards each other as testosterone decreases naturally in the male. Facial features especially have a tendency to soften over time.
So I don't know. I suppose it's a transition game of opportunity. Or, who can make the best of a bad situation they are in. No matter where you fall in the age spectrum losing a family is a very real possibility. The older you are though, the more entrenched you become with family and very important needed material things like housing and work.
Finally, let's not forget the influence from the overall world around us. I know in my case, for a fact, kids these days pay me almost no attention. And of course, the internet has turned out to be the great equalizer as far as disseminating knowledge/information to the transgender, LGBT, community has gone.
No one (obviously) can really say if transitioning is better - or worse. It depends upon each individual and the situation they are in. So often in our trans tribe, we are so close yet so far apart!
3 comments:
Yes, opportunity is maybe the thing that makes transitioning a possibility. For those of us who are transitioning now in our 60's, there was very little in the way of opportunity when we first struggled with our gender identities. If I had an oldest known picture of myself, it would be from a Polaroid camera, and I think still in black and white, as the color cameras had not been invented yet (getting a roll of film developed through the local drug store was NOT an option, for fear of outing myself). It never occurred to me to take my own pic as a child, though, because I was always very careful not to leave any evidence of my cross dressing "opportunities." Those are not the opportunities we're talking about, however. The opportunities we need to consider are, more precisely, found in the available options. There were few, if any, available to us 50 -60 years ago.
I've never subscribed to the saying: "a woman trapped in a man's body." The trap, for me, had always been the lack of available options - no exit door from my closet, so to speak. So, I must say that it was much harder to live with that than the transition process has been. I had become more than entrenched; I had dug a very deep hole for myself.
I would not recommend waiting for nature to reduce testosterone levels. I don't know if my "softer features" are the result of that, or just that I have a fat face. :-) I only know that I would have been better off had I had much less of it (testosterone) in the first place. I'd be much better off without much of the fat now, but I'm hoping to become the white Queen Latifa these days, anyway. ;-)
I remember when my own kids paid me almost no attention, but that had nothing to do with my gender identity back then. :-)
I find that as the responsibilities of children and career begin to fade the idea appears more appealing plus I know who I am now versus when I was younger so in that sense, for me anyway it would be easier now than when I was 25. Not to mention that society has changed so much since then...
All great points! Thanks Joanna :)
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